Heineken invierte en Yucatán: Guillaume Duverdier | Milenio Negocios

Thank you very much, first to Regina and Guillermo for having me. It is a pleasure to announce this new investment by Heineken in Mexico: a new brewery we will build in Yucatán. This project is very important to us; it symbolizes our confidence in Mexico and our ambition in this market. It will be our eighth brewery in the country. The last one we opened was in Meoqui five years ago. We continue investing in Mexico. This new brewery, with an investment of 8.7 billion pesos, is expected to start construction in 2024 and begin production in 2026. It is located near Mérida and will create more than 2,000 direct and indirect jobs of high quality in Yucatán.

In fact, the President did us the honor of visiting us in Monterrey a few years ago, during which he toured our brewery here and recognized the good work we are doing. He also suggested we consider investing in the southeast. In parallel, we knew that the southeast market is developing well both for beer and economically. We studied the potential and concluded there was a great opportunity. So we decided to make this investment.

Certainly. Beer has the peculiarity of being a product that goes from the field to the bar. That means our industry employs not only many farmers, because we buy barley locally, but also production, distribution, all the points of sale, tienditas, changarros, and consumers. It is one of the activities that creates the most value within the economy, one of the most important industries in the country.

Since it will be our newest brewery, it will also have the latest technology, world-class technology that will allow us to minimize energy and water consumption. It will be equipped with circularity tools such as a water treatment plant that will recycle 100% of the water we don't use, potentially for use by other industries.

Beer in general involves many people across the country. It is an industry that not only sources all its raw materials domestically but also sells a lot domestically and has an export component that brings in foreign currency. That's why it plays a very important role in the economy.

For me, what's very notable about the industry in Mexico is that it is growing. The beer sector has grown between 6% and 7% over the last 10 years, except for the pandemic period. It's a market in strong development.

This plant is essentially designed to supply the southeast market. We expect that 90% of the volume produced here will be for that domestic market. That said, we leave some space for potential exports, knowing that brands like Tecate and Dos Equis are doing very well in the United States. Also, Yucatán has the great advantage of very developed infrastructure.

One important thing is to never forget your past and roots. We are an industry with very traditional roots, but we want to develop it in a much more modern way. Our ambition is to have this balance between not forgetting our roots, what makes us who we are, and also developing what suits the consumer of the future.

I believe the market we are in is very important because of the size of the economy, the population, and the fact that everything is growing. Within this market, we have a very important position. That's why the Mexican operation carries significant weight within the group. We also have the responsibility to develop brands for Mexico and for the rest of the group.

First, there are many evolutions we are making in our brands. For example, in the past we had the original beer and then developed light beer. Currently with the Heineken brand, we have Heineken Original and we are also developing lighter products like Heineken 0.0. We are developing more products that adapt to changing consumer habits. This is part of our program to adapt to global challenges: reducing water consumption. In Mexico we are very advanced; we only use 2.4 liters of water per liter of beer, and with this new brewery we aim to reduce that to less than 2 liters using the latest technology. The second thing is circularity: treat all water we don't use so it can be reused by other industries, not losing a single drop. The third element is balancing: when we take water from aquifers, we want to return an equivalent amount. How? Through rainwater retention. It rains a lot in the southeast, but 70% of the rainwater evaporates and does not enter the aquifers. The challenge is to retain that water so it recharges the aquifers.